


The Descent of Ben Solo

by mantra4ia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben solo's descent into Kylo Ren, Canon Backstory, Canon Divergence - Star Wars Expanded Universe, Father-Son Relationship, Force Visions, Gen, Jedi Training (Star Wars), Kylo Ren Backstory, Manipulative Sheev Palpatine, Mentioned Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo, POV Ben Solo, Parent-Child Relationship, Parents Han and Leia, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars - Freeform, Star Wars EU - Freeform, Star Wars References, Star Wars: The Last Jedi References, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker References, The Force, The Solo family, Uncle-Nephew Relationship, Young Ben Solo, sw: tlj, sw: tros, tros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22014538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mantra4ia/pseuds/mantra4ia
Summary: I’ve seen a few complaints that the Rise of Skywalker still doesn’t give us enough information to go on about why and what caused Ben’s rift with Han and Leia, before he turned to the First Order, in a similar way that The Last Jedi gives us a window into the degradation of Luke and Ben’s relationship, but not a lot on what came before.I don’t mind that RoS didn’t touch on more of Ben’s past. Firstly, there simply wasn’t the time or place within the span of a day, the Final Order looming ahead. Secondly, and this is the big one, the screenplay doesn’t do well with nuance - it tells us so much about what’s going on through flimsy dialogue, or nothing at all, with no middle ground - and Ben Solo’s backstory deserves nuance. However, Episode IX does show us a nugget of information given to Rey upon which our imaginations can create the fall of Ben Solo into the Rise of Kylo Ren. This is my Star Wars EU tale of those events…
Relationships: Ben Solo & Han Solo, Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Luke Skywalker & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Kudos: 8





	The Descent of Ben Solo

**Author's Note:**

> The story hinges on a spoiler from Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker. You've been warned.  
> Spoiler: We get to see a flashback of Luke training Leia in episode IX (now saga canon), in which it is revealed by the narrating character that Leia had a Vision on the very day she would have completed her Force training. *A vision that her Jedi journey would end with the death of her son.* Leia didn’t go the way that Luke eventually would and cut herself off from the Force, rather she puts down her saber and pumps the breaks on her training. Now, I don’t know what is concrete in Star Wars legend about events after the vision (as it relates to film novelizations or supplemental material), but I imagine Leia believing that if she stops her training, she can avoid the vision’s fruition in a scenario much akin to the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. 

Flash forward to Ben Solo in his adolescence, older then the classical age for a Padawan or a student of the Force, when by chance and grave mistake Uncle Luke tells Han and Leia that he believes Ben has acuity in the Force. Luke is unaware that Leia already knows and has been avoiding the subject in conversation for some time. When Ben was growing up, she had always praised his abilities that were so attune with the flow of the Force - the understanding of biology and relationships of living creatures, his study of biomes, his understanding of emotions as they traveled from person to person, and how he could instantly alter the mood of a room or cease it’s contention with his presence and small gestures of kindness. But Leia was always judicious, cautious to never outright call them Force influenced because she did not want to pique Ben’s curiosity. 

[Up till this point, I imagine Ben on good terms with his parents; maybe he is already in a state of age-related rebellion with his folks, but I don’t see a reason to assume that] 

And Ben’s curiosity was always aflame. He looks up to uncle Luke Skywalker, in that unique uncle-nephew bond that has become reverential is stories, fueled by the fact Leia has told him a wealth of Jedi stories (which may heckle Han a bit, and sometimes that’s part of her intention). What Leia doesn’t realize - Luke has sat down with Ben any number of times to share stories about Leia and her Force abilities, a stark contrast to the Leia Ben knows as his mom. The woman who was at first a diplomat for the New Republic Galactic Senate and then as relations broke down, and outer rim insurgency broke out, a leader of the Resistance to keep peace. Force user? This doesn’t fit Ben’s image of his mother, yet it opened his mind wide and wild to possibilities. So when Luke says to the Solo family “I think Ben is strong in the Force, and he should be trained to Master it’s ways,” Ben overhears. And before Leia can stop him, Ben says that a part of him is not surprised, and the first thing he asks is, “Mom, can you train me? Can I be your apprentice?”

Han thinks its a good idea.

Luke agrees.

And to everyone’s shock - Ben’s most of all - Leia says no. “ _After all the understanding of my gifts, all these years, all the smiles and encouragement: why would my mother refuse to accept me, train me?_ ” he wonders, more hurt than he lets on.

Leia knows why. She’s afraid that if she picks up a saber to train him, it will seal Ben’s fate. It’ll kill him. She doesn’t know if it will be by her hand or another, she doesn’t care. _She just wants Ben safe,_ but she vocalizes none of this to Han or her brother at that moment.

[Years from now in the time to come, Luke comes to her in tears, weighted by guilt over losing Ben to the dark side, seeking out a way to close himself off to the Force. And in the process of consoling her brother, only then will her secret see the light. “It’s not your fault we lost him…it’s mine,” she’ll say, finally admitting the reason she stopped her Jedi training years ago. She hands Luke her training saber in the hopes that it will convince him to stay. It’s not enough. But there’s not a day that goes by in his Exile that he doesn’t look at the lightsaber and think of that fateful painful choice.]

So at first Leia pushes back on the idea of Ben training with every ounce of resistance, and on the face of the issue Han takes her side for a united front but ultimately he is torn. Despite his own apathetic beliefs around the Force, in Han’s heart he feels that the structure of training would be good for Ben as he watches his son grow more anxious at the power, the potential, within him. A power that Han only grasps on a superficial level and thus feels the weight of guilt and not being able to teach him these very specific things. Try as he might to throw his time into teaching Ben about blasters, trading, bargaining, haggling, ship mechanics, it doesn’t ease Ben’s mind, who himself is becoming a more vocal advocate of training. Until eventually Leia concedes. Ben will be trained, but not by her. **By Luke.**

And just like that, though the bonds between Luke, Leia, and Han were strong, their dynamic shifts and underlying tensions mount. Han, who at first wanted Ben to train, now hesitates because he doesn’t want Ben so far from home over vast stretches of time now. They’ve bonded over blasters, trading, and shop talk. Ben sees his father tread back on his word, and instead of reading the intentions out of love, Ben believes that his father has _lost faith in his readiness_ to leave home, just as his mother’s faith had flickered when she’d refused to train him. _Did she too not believe he was not committed, prepared to train hard? Or was he not strong enough in her eyes, his abilities unable withstand the kind of training she could offer? Or was he, her own son, simply unworthy of being her student?_

Self doubt creeps into Ben’s mind, and it alters all relationships that it touches, with Leia, Han, even Luke, who he admires. Ben had always been keenly aware, when he spoke highly of Luke, of the tension it sowed within Han, but at a young age Ben couldn’t put a name to it. Even Han didn’t fully understand the veiled envy and regret at his own perceived ineptitude - every parent wants to offer their child the world, all there is to teach, regardless of the huge, unrealistic burden of expectation it shrugs onto their shoulders. A yoke Han had unknowingly placed on himself, that Ben would never ask him to carry. So he tried not to let his emotions show too openly in front of his father. 

Feeling the strain of pressure to conceal his admiration for Skywalker, Ben funnels this conflict into the discontented illusion, the fear, that Luke only agreed to take him on because Leia would not. Luke didn’t choose him, he was just trying to make the best of what was given, pawned, to him. And illusion works, it tempers Ben’s fondness for his uncle with a grain of bitterness. From Luke’s point of view, obviously this couldn’t be further from truth. He’s thrilled to have Ben as an apprentice, it’s one of the hopes he’d envisioned when he suggested training in the first place. But Ben doesn’t see it that way, and so he starts his training from the low ground: _mom doesn’t think my force abilities are strong enough, dad doesn’t think I’m ready to train, and Uncle Luke who I idolize thinks that I am second pick or he would have offered to train me himself,_ _and Leia wouldn’t have had to ask him, beg him, her own brother._

The result: Ben trains vigorously to prove himself, harder than any other student Luke takes on at his Academy. His power, which under different circumstances may have been just above average, grows exponentially to meet his demands. Not through blood alone, but intensity and force of will. Luke offers Ben many opportunities to go home and visit his family, but Ben more often than not declines the respite. He doesn’t feel he’s reached a level of accomplishment that he can go home proudly show to erase any doubts, despite the fact he misses home and catches himself longing to return with a pang of resentment at uncle Luke the training that keeps him away, and a second pang of resentment at himself for feeling that way about his teacher. Naturally from Han and Leia’s perspective they can’t see or feel the battle within him. All they see is their son growing distant and they sometimes argue about why. Han thinks perhaps Ben has grown angry with him or no longer cares about the interests they used to share, Leia wonders if Ben is still disheartened that she wouldn’t train him. Had she lost his trust when she concealed her reasons? Would she have been honest if she’d tried to explain?

Then it happens. One fateful day Ben pushes himself too hard, using a control-based technique he’d been training called Force Body, an ability from the Jedi texts meant for Masters which allowed him to to push his body’s endurance past a safe limit, ignoring his health and well-being in order to sustain connection to the Force. Unknown to Luke, Ben uses this newfound, raw ability to survive an intense reconnaissance mission where failure could have killed them both. And force body works! Until suddenly it fails Ben like a tremendous feedback loop. Luke has never been more proud of how Ben handled himself during the mission, and they are about to celebrate when Ben becomes violently ill. His body becomes dangerously hot, intermittently tensed as if his muscles and bones were fighting to see which would snap first, and then lax as if collapsing in on itself like a dense, dying star, and it’s all Luke can do to reach out with the Force keep this syndrome in check from getting worse as they travel back to the core systems and the academy in Yavin 4, at one point having to stain his senses just to feel if Ben is still breathing. At is, Luke changes course and rushes him home to his family, unsure of what the next few hours will bring, and even as Luke tries to use their connection to ease Ben’s pain, Han lays into Luke, rips into him for the first fight of real magnitude that they’ve had IN YEARS. “You’re pushing him too hard!” Han yells, not quite sure who he should be angry with for putting Ben in danger amongst the trio in the room, Luke, Leia, or himself. Truly unaware that a majority of the pushing has been Ben’s responsibility alone. 

“I promise you Han, I swear I’m not. He’s my nephew - “

“HE’S MY SON!” And while Ben lies in bed unconscious, the flood gates open pouring out all the tensions felt but unspoken in years past between the three of them, and Han storms out of the house in the middle of the night. He gets as far as the bay doors of the Falcon. He’s angry, and no good to anyone like this, so he plans to good out on a cargo run - a quick job to clear his head. “Don’t give me that look Chewie-” is all he can manage to say before the Wookie forcibly removes him from the pit and slams the door in his face. “Oh course you would side with Leia, this is mutiny plain and simple,” Han tirades while banging at the entryway barred before him - until that is when a feeling stops him. He can’t quite put words to it, but a memory pops into his head of the first time he taught Ben how to properly tie down freight in a cargo hold - a huge crate of Kaadu hatchlings - when Ben was six or seven years old. Oh how he wanted to learn how to replace plasma fuel cells instead. How he struggled keeping tension in the ratcheting cables, until he missed a step on the whole thing came loose and went slack, and Han couldn’t hold back his laughter. That was how Han could best describe the feeling now. A cable inside him that had been attached to something valuable had gone inexplicably limp, and as he pulled on the thread, he felt no counter pull. Before he could understand why, Han was running back toward the house. Leia was still awake in Ben’s room - he looked unchanged since Han had gone. Without pomp or preface to anything that had transpired earlier that night, Han kissed Leia behind the ear.

“You left.” she whispered.

“I came back, didn’t I?” he said distractedly. 

“That was the first time I didn’t enjoy watching you walk away. Don’t make a habit of it.” She warned even as he kissed her other ear and implored her to go to bed so that he could take the next watch. As soon as she left, Han carefully unfurled the sheets around his son’s shoulders, and as gently as he could slipped into the bed to hold him without a second thought, even to remove his shoes. Leia could scold him about tracking mud onto the covers in the morning.

“Hey kid,” Han measured his words so that they wouldn’t all come crashing out of him, and as he did he began to rock his son softly, pacing out each thought. “Based on what I know about all this Force business, I can imagine…I would hope that you can hear me. Or…” he faltered, and swallowed hard, “feel me, Ben. So I need your attention. If it’s time for you to leave,” he said, imagining all the stages that a father lets go of a son, so many ways, the last being hardest of all, “I can understand. But not without me. That’s what you need to understand.” He stayed with Ben, not daring to leave again the rest of the night, vigilantly focused on even the smallest change, until at last he heard rain on roof and Ben’s fever, like the tired silence of parched night, broke.

It took days to fully recover, but when Ben was up and walking at last, he felt stronger than he’d ever had, his desire to renew training was fervent and final. This was the straw that set Han’s path, adrift, in motion. He refused to accept it, he implored Leia to reject the notion of sending Ben back to Yavin with Luke, and Ben was caught in the middle of it all. 

“We can’t leave him this way, half prepared.” Leia tried to make Han see her reasoning, “Not with the kind of power he has. Without restraint and balance, this is only a taste of the harm it could cause him. Ben’s come this far, he has to see this through to the end.”

“That’s right Leia, he has to finish what he started…or is he finishing what you started?”

“Han, that isn’t fair -”

“Because the way I see it, _you_ stopped. You stopped and _your life still turned out alright_ **,** didn’t it?” The silence that followed, where the secret should have been, sealed their fates at the crossroads, “Trust. It’s him or it’s me, Leia, When it comes to Ben, it’s Luke, or it’s me.” And in Han's mind he pleaded _be with me._

Two ships left Chandrila that afternoon on diverging paths: Ben’s transport and the Millennium Falcon.

Ben did resume his training, and advance his inner strength under Luke’s guidance, **but Han was right**. It was not the last time Ben would fall ill. No episodes were nearly as bad as that first harrowing trial, but the smaller ailments began to besiege him with accelerated frequency. Despite all his studies, Luke could not seem to pin point why, so instead Luke stewarded his nephew’s every step with restriction upon restriction to pace Ben’s progress. It was as infuriating as it was ineffective at achieving the goal, and Ben struggled against every censure, unable to stand that notion that Luke thought he was weak, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Until one evening Luke has a Force Vision of his own. What if what ails Ben is not of the body, but a disquiet in his mind made manifest? That, Luke thought, he could treat. So he went to Ben, and finding him asleep with no heart to wake him after the kind of training day he’d been through, Luke reached out to his nephews thoughts, in search an any disarray that he might put back into balance.

And that’s when he was swallowed by darkness, so profound and inky black that direction lost all meaning. The pain and horror yet to come, because the dark side had turned his heart, his future, all he potential of what he could become. _How could Luke have known at the time that what he felt was not Ben’s fate, but the seeds of self-doubt that Darth Sidious had sown long ago…in Leia, that passed to Han, and finally took root in Ben, a slow corruption so that he could bring about one fate, one future, that of his own making._

_How could Ben have known, when he awoke to the verdant glow of a lightsaber illuminating his Master’s face, disfigured by hatred - a coldhearted, resolute killer - that he wasn’t seeing his uncle Luke. But the ultimate unreliable narrator: the dark side. The puppet strings of Palpatine, masking the real pain of Luke Skywalker, filled with failure, shame, and remorse, repulsed by the thought of striking Ben down._

_Alright,_ Ben thought at last, _enough,_ as the memories flooded his every reaction. _Not strong enough, unworthy, not ready. Darkness, destruction, death. If these are the monstrous things you perceive me to be, then let me show you the monster I am._

“Ben. No!”

> And on that day an armor was made, whose sole purpose was to obscure Ben's true reflection in the mirror, that thing he most feared: a Skywalker. Better to shroud his image behind a mask and cast down his eyes of from seeing the truth - the soul of someone good, who was capable of terrible things. It was far easier to be a monster.
> 
> He called it Kylo Ren. 

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if any of my legends / lore references are faulty. I will try to improve my world building in the future. Please comment and critique the writing, or comment to share your thoughts on the Star Wars Skywalker Saga.


End file.
